The Kotel (that is, the Western Wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem) has been at the front and center of my consciousness -- and of the news -- lately.
To make a long story short, it has to do with the Women of the Wall (WOW). The Women of the Wall is a group of women who have been meeting at the Kotel every Rosh Hodesh (the first day of a new Hebrew month) for over twenty years, seeking the right to pray there as a group. They've faced opposition all along the way. Male Hareidim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) have treated them with contempt, sometimes throwing water bottles and chairs at them. The ultra-Orthodox women who gather around them don't tend to yell and scream; instead, they quietly plead with them to desist from praying as a group, warning that they face eternal damnation should they not.
I've gone to the Kotel to observe the Women of the Wall on each of the past three Rosh Hodeshes (in March, April and May). During the first two, all I witnessed was screaming and shofar blowing (to drown out the sound of the women's voices).
A few pictures appear below.
Even though there was no violence, the March and April gatherings were nonetheless disturbing. For one thing, even though the Hareidim did not physically threaten the women, they employed threatening and inflammatory rhetoric. As one Hareidi man shouted, "We withstood Hitler and we will withstand the reformim (Reform Jews)." This is a common theme in the rhetoric of the Hareidim: to see the Reform and Conservative movements as heretical sects whose purpose and effect is to destroy "true" Judaism. (The irony is that Women of the Wall includes Orthodox women.)
Moreover, both in March and in April, WOW women were detained by the police. The women were told that they were violating "local custom" by praying with tallit and tefillin, and they were threatened with expulsion from the Kotel.
In March, the women who had been detained were simply intimidated, and then released with a warning. However, in April, when the group was brought before a judge, something unexpected took place. The magistrate (who happened to be female) bluntly dismissed the police's argument that the women and their "provocative behavior" were responsible for the disturbances. She denied the police's request that the women be barred from the Kotel for three months and ordered them released immediately. She went further: she made it clear that the women had every right to pray at the Kotel. The police quickly appealed, and were dealt an even more serious blow in the appeals court. There, Judge Sobel (this time a man, and a religious one at that) ruled not only that the Women of the Wall had the right to gather, pray out loud and read from the Torah at the Kotel, but also that it was not inconsistent with "the custom of the place" for them to do so wearing tallit and tefillin.
The government could have appealed this surprising decision to the Supreme Court, but for whatever reason, Israel's Attorney General chose not to do that. And so, when Rosh Hodesh Sivan rolled around on Friday, May 10th, the police understood that their responsibility was not to arrest the women of the Wall but to protect them.
It's fortunate that the police had come to this conclusion, because the Women of the Wall's legal victory the previous month had prompted a massive protest. Young ultra-Orthodox women students -- thousands of them -- were bussed in, in order to prevent the Women of the Wall from approaching the Kotel. And thousands of men were there as well -- to heap abuse on the women and their protectors.
I arrived a few minutes late. As I entered the plaza, I was confronted by a sea of black hats. As I passed through the security gate (which was unmanned; all of the police were in the plaza), I suddenly saw a Hareidi man spit forcefully and angrily into the face of a woman who was leaving the Kotel plaza. I was dumbfounded. Had he seen her pray? Is that what led to his rage? It wasn't at all clear to me. I was so taken aback, I was speechless. But my wife, Elana, was not. She turned to the man and calmly said, "How can you treat someone this way?" The man looked at her incredulously: "But they're Reform!" he said.
Once down at the Plaza, Elana went her way and I went mine. I found myself in a mob -- a jeering and determined one. Water bottles were flying. And then a chair got tossed in the air. "What's going on?" I asked one of the men. "The police," he said. "They're protecting the women." It became clear that the police were preventing the Hareidi men from overwhelming the Women of the Wall. Ordinarily, the WOW group gathers in the women's section of the Kotel. This time, because it was so crowded with young seminary students, they were forced to gather in the public plaza far away from the Kotel itself.
But that didn't stop the men from screaming and whistling and mocking the women. And because the police stood in their way, the police became a target too.
I managed to find my way to the protected area in which the Women of the Wall were davening. Although they had agreed not to bring a Torah scroll with them -- there were fears that this would spark a catastrophic riot -- they did read the Torah from a Humash. A girl (the daughter of a colleague of mine) celebrated becoming a bat mitzvah. Then, when the service was over, the police ushered us quickly out of the plaza. The anger was still potent. Eggs were thrown, and more water bottles. Buses had been commandeered by the police to shuttle the women of the wall out of the area. The Hareidim ran from the plaza to the parking lot and screamed and threw rocks at the buses. To read a newspaper story about the incident, click here. To see a remarkable collection of photographs taken by Noam Revkin-Fenton that morning, go here.
No one knows what will happen next month.
In response to the growing tension, Prime Minister Netanyahu has charged Natan Sharansky with the responsibility of coming up with a solution to the problem. He has proposed that the Kotel plaza be expanded to include the area to the south known as "Robinson's Arch"so that there can be three sections: men only (controlled by the Orthodox rabbinate), women only, and a group for egalitarian worship. The details of his plan have not yet been publically revealed, but the proposal has been met with qualified approval by liberal Jewish leaders in the States.
The Women of the Wall are not certain that they will accept the proposal. For they seek not to pray in a separate "egalitarian" section of the Kotel: they seek the right to pray in the women's section.
Time will tell what they will decide to do, and whether they will succeed. Some commentators have urged the women to refrain from praying at the wall until the Sharansky compromise plan has been implemented. For example, you can read an opinion piece written by Yossi Klein Halevi by clicking here.
I agree with Halevi that all sides should support Sharansky's efforts to find a solution, and I find his piece thoughtful and well-written. However, I think that Halevi is wrong when he suggests (at the beginning and at the end of his piece) that the Women of the Wall share responsibility for the disgraceful behavior that has been taking place at the Wall each month. The only way in which the Women of the Wall have contributed to that disgrace is by being victims of it. I, for one, think it is inappropriate to blame the victims of hatred and contempt (and contemptible behavior) for what happens to them, and to condemn them for peacefully asserting their rights.
To be continued ...
To make a long story short, it has to do with the Women of the Wall (WOW). The Women of the Wall is a group of women who have been meeting at the Kotel every Rosh Hodesh (the first day of a new Hebrew month) for over twenty years, seeking the right to pray there as a group. They've faced opposition all along the way. Male Hareidim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) have treated them with contempt, sometimes throwing water bottles and chairs at them. The ultra-Orthodox women who gather around them don't tend to yell and scream; instead, they quietly plead with them to desist from praying as a group, warning that they face eternal damnation should they not.
I've gone to the Kotel to observe the Women of the Wall on each of the past three Rosh Hodeshes (in March, April and May). During the first two, all I witnessed was screaming and shofar blowing (to drown out the sound of the women's voices).
A few pictures appear below.
(Notice that the WOW group is quite small.)
(Nonetheless, the opposition they engender is quite intense.)
(This man blew his shofar continually for several minutes,
seeking to drown out the sound of the women davening.)
Even though there was no violence, the March and April gatherings were nonetheless disturbing. For one thing, even though the Hareidim did not physically threaten the women, they employed threatening and inflammatory rhetoric. As one Hareidi man shouted, "We withstood Hitler and we will withstand the reformim (Reform Jews)." This is a common theme in the rhetoric of the Hareidim: to see the Reform and Conservative movements as heretical sects whose purpose and effect is to destroy "true" Judaism. (The irony is that Women of the Wall includes Orthodox women.)
Moreover, both in March and in April, WOW women were detained by the police. The women were told that they were violating "local custom" by praying with tallit and tefillin, and they were threatened with expulsion from the Kotel.
In March, the women who had been detained were simply intimidated, and then released with a warning. However, in April, when the group was brought before a judge, something unexpected took place. The magistrate (who happened to be female) bluntly dismissed the police's argument that the women and their "provocative behavior" were responsible for the disturbances. She denied the police's request that the women be barred from the Kotel for three months and ordered them released immediately. She went further: she made it clear that the women had every right to pray at the Kotel. The police quickly appealed, and were dealt an even more serious blow in the appeals court. There, Judge Sobel (this time a man, and a religious one at that) ruled not only that the Women of the Wall had the right to gather, pray out loud and read from the Torah at the Kotel, but also that it was not inconsistent with "the custom of the place" for them to do so wearing tallit and tefillin.
The government could have appealed this surprising decision to the Supreme Court, but for whatever reason, Israel's Attorney General chose not to do that. And so, when Rosh Hodesh Sivan rolled around on Friday, May 10th, the police understood that their responsibility was not to arrest the women of the Wall but to protect them.
It's fortunate that the police had come to this conclusion, because the Women of the Wall's legal victory the previous month had prompted a massive protest. Young ultra-Orthodox women students -- thousands of them -- were bussed in, in order to prevent the Women of the Wall from approaching the Kotel. And thousands of men were there as well -- to heap abuse on the women and their protectors.
I arrived a few minutes late. As I entered the plaza, I was confronted by a sea of black hats. As I passed through the security gate (which was unmanned; all of the police were in the plaza), I suddenly saw a Hareidi man spit forcefully and angrily into the face of a woman who was leaving the Kotel plaza. I was dumbfounded. Had he seen her pray? Is that what led to his rage? It wasn't at all clear to me. I was so taken aback, I was speechless. But my wife, Elana, was not. She turned to the man and calmly said, "How can you treat someone this way?" The man looked at her incredulously: "But they're Reform!" he said.
Once down at the Plaza, Elana went her way and I went mine. I found myself in a mob -- a jeering and determined one. Water bottles were flying. And then a chair got tossed in the air. "What's going on?" I asked one of the men. "The police," he said. "They're protecting the women." It became clear that the police were preventing the Hareidi men from overwhelming the Women of the Wall. Ordinarily, the WOW group gathers in the women's section of the Kotel. This time, because it was so crowded with young seminary students, they were forced to gather in the public plaza far away from the Kotel itself.
But that didn't stop the men from screaming and whistling and mocking the women. And because the police stood in their way, the police became a target too.
I managed to find my way to the protected area in which the Women of the Wall were davening. Although they had agreed not to bring a Torah scroll with them -- there were fears that this would spark a catastrophic riot -- they did read the Torah from a Humash. A girl (the daughter of a colleague of mine) celebrated becoming a bat mitzvah. Then, when the service was over, the police ushered us quickly out of the plaza. The anger was still potent. Eggs were thrown, and more water bottles. Buses had been commandeered by the police to shuttle the women of the wall out of the area. The Hareidim ran from the plaza to the parking lot and screamed and threw rocks at the buses. To read a newspaper story about the incident, click here. To see a remarkable collection of photographs taken by Noam Revkin-Fenton that morning, go here.
No one knows what will happen next month.
In response to the growing tension, Prime Minister Netanyahu has charged Natan Sharansky with the responsibility of coming up with a solution to the problem. He has proposed that the Kotel plaza be expanded to include the area to the south known as "Robinson's Arch"so that there can be three sections: men only (controlled by the Orthodox rabbinate), women only, and a group for egalitarian worship. The details of his plan have not yet been publically revealed, but the proposal has been met with qualified approval by liberal Jewish leaders in the States.
The Women of the Wall are not certain that they will accept the proposal. For they seek not to pray in a separate "egalitarian" section of the Kotel: they seek the right to pray in the women's section.
Time will tell what they will decide to do, and whether they will succeed. Some commentators have urged the women to refrain from praying at the wall until the Sharansky compromise plan has been implemented. For example, you can read an opinion piece written by Yossi Klein Halevi by clicking here.
I agree with Halevi that all sides should support Sharansky's efforts to find a solution, and I find his piece thoughtful and well-written. However, I think that Halevi is wrong when he suggests (at the beginning and at the end of his piece) that the Women of the Wall share responsibility for the disgraceful behavior that has been taking place at the Wall each month. The only way in which the Women of the Wall have contributed to that disgrace is by being victims of it. I, for one, think it is inappropriate to blame the victims of hatred and contempt (and contemptible behavior) for what happens to them, and to condemn them for peacefully asserting their rights.
To be continued ...
